I thrived on the fresh simple food (meat, fish, vegetables, milk, butter, lard, eggs), my mother cooked for our family. My health and energy began to decline when, in my mid-twenties, I took on a vegetarian approach, with all its manufactured margarine, soya milk, pasta, starchy rice and so on.
I also lost many nutrients by not eating meat and fish.
My sudden change to vegetarianism may also explain the very negative change in my libido. Which is a swine, because I loved my libido!
KETO? I NEVER DIET!
My long-term vegetarian husband had had gut problems for most of our time together, and after some research we decided upon a ketogenic approach to our food to see if things could be improved.
Within months my husband's gut issues completely resolved!
And very soon, without setting out do so, we both lost most of our abdominal fat.
On top of this, we found ourselves suffering less tiredness, and I noticed incipient joint pain had gone, as well as a reduction in brain fog. My asthma too started to improve!
It seemed that inflammation, with its accompanying symptoms, was being dealt with!
So what is, and why did we choose, a ketogenic diet?
'It is a very low carb, high fat diet that shares many similarities with the Atkins and low carb diets.
'It involves drastically reducing carbohydrate intake and replacing it with fat. This reduction in carbs puts your body into a metabolic state called 'ketosis'.
'When this happens, your body becomes incredibly efficient at burning fat for energy. . It also turns fat into ketones in the liver, which can supply energy for the brain.
'Ketogenic diets can cause significant reductions in blood sugar and insulin levels (and thus inflammation). This, along with the increased ketones, has specific health benefits against diabetes, heart disease, cancer, epilepsy, and Alzheimer’s disease.'
KETO: A PROPER HUMAN DIET?
A 'proper human diet', containing a high proportion of ‘good’ fats, and with greatly reduced carbohydrates, can, according to Dr Ken Berry MD (watch here), address many metabolic problems.
The 'proper human diet' is nutrient dense; full of fatty acids, amino acids, vitamins and minerals. This diet is satiating; containing healthy fat, healthy protein and non-starchy vegetables. It is a diet that, in an evolutionary sense, is optimal for human health.
Dr Berry, a family physician who practices in Tennessee in the United States (drberry.com), has a mission to help the increasing number of people suffering inflammation-based metabolic illness. He encourages us to follow this 'proper human diet'. He says, "This is, by definition, uninflammatory". He explains that the ingestion of excess sugar along with grain-based carbohydrates creates insulin resistance and thus chronic inflammation.
"Dr Ken Berry .....has made it his mission to turn the tide on the epidemic of Type 2 Diabetes, chronic inflammation and dementia." Karen Martel, Transformational Nutrition (watch here)
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